The Eons-Lost Orphan (The Space Orphan Book 1)

by Laer Carroll

  He was immediately mobbed by questioners. Shaking his head he began handing out flyers taken from the back seat. Meanwhile other cadets were handing out flyers. Nicole had ordered a thousand. It was barely enough by an hour later.

  The top of the flyer read Falcon Floater Technology Demonstrator.

  The text said, "Student technology demonstrators are part of the US Air Force Academy's long-time DNA. Students studying the engineering and technological cutting edge which has made the US Air Force dominant in the skies show leadership and enterprise by putting theory into practice with these demonstrators.

  "The Falcon Floater is a student project done in partnership with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. There twice-Nobel nominee Professor Alexander Kuznetsov has come up with a ground-breaking theory about the nature of magnetism. Realizing its potential for creating real life devices, five students banded together to explore this theory by attempting to build a technology demonstrator. Using off the shelf components and lots of skull sweat and elbow grease this is the device you see today.

  "To learn more about this radical new technology see the following link to Dr. Kuznetsov's white paper titled Some Possible Applications of Telemagnetic Induction Technology."

  The double doors to the crew's lab had remained open while Klaus took cadets and others for short trips in the floating cart, as far as half a mile down the street and looping back through other streets. He frequently took short cuts over lawns and once over a tennis court.

  Inside much-neatened lab tables had been set up with finger food and chilled soft drinks. A couple of dozen chairs (not too comfortable, Nicole had insisted) seated chatting visitors. Stacks of flyers sat on several surfaces.

  One group of cadets sat cross legged in one corner, one woman and three men.

  "Look at this," one said, showing the others a diagram from the CalTech white paper on his unfolded tablet computer. "A jet engine can be built using these telemagnetic thingies. Uses no fuel, just batteries. Lots cooler than thermal jets. Higher potential specific impulse, up to the limits of fabrication tech. Lady and gentlemen, behold the future of the aircraft we will fly."

  Another was looking at the back of the flyer.

  "Look here. One of the project crew: Jane Kuznetsov. She's the daughter of Old Man Kuznetsov. No wonder the Academy got the fast track on demonstrators of telemag tech."

  "Oh, yeah, she's that second-year that does those 'drop and do me twenty' pushups like a god-damned machine."

  "Hey I'm sitting right here. Watch your language in front of ladies, fuckhead."

  Chapter 16 - USAF Academy - Year 2

  Second Semester - Part 2

  The crew and a half dozen friends took a Flyt van into Colorado Springs for an early dinner. Their destination was the very popular Edelweiss German/European restaurant, so popular that they had to make a reservation even for 5:00 o'clock. They got there a bit after 5:00 and had most of one room to themselves.

  Not everyone knew everyone, so they were still getting to know each other when the food arrived. Conversation died almost to nothing as they got down to eating and drinking. Most had German beer, Nicole had a chilled white wine, and Jane a Coke. For food she had a "Pesto Crusted Salmon Filet" with sides including "wild rice." She commented on the adjectives.

  "What the devil is 'wild' rice? And 'pesto crusted'?"

  This got a whole litany of answers for "wild" rice, some contradictory. A black cadet improbably named Valentino said, "I looked up the pesto name once. Basically pesto means a bunch of ingredients mashed together by a pestle, so 'pesto.' Here it's a half dozen items including pine nuts, basil leaves, cheese, and mixed with olive oil to make the pesto a sauce."

  "Whatever they put in it, yum. How did you get Valentino for a name?"

  "My parents loved old black and white movies, especially the ones with dancing. You know, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire. And Rudolph Valentino. Et Voila, me."

  "You say the French with such realistic flair. Do you actually speak French?"

  "I do, Mademoiselle. Took it all through high school, spent a gap year in France, back packing."

  Nicole leaned near briefly. "He took the language thinking he could pretend to be French and seduce innocent girls."

  "Alas," he said, putting on a fake-sad face. "I was wrong."

  Nicole said with an enigmatic smile, "Not entirely."

  "Oh, ho," said someone whose name Jane had missed. "Did the fair Nicole succumb to Val's vile seductions?"

  "Val" said with a noble air, "My seductions are never vile. They are quite tasteful. Roses and moonlight and sweet whispered nothings."

  Everyone laughed and the conversation flowed on.

  Soon Jane turned away to engage the cadet to her opposite side in conversation. But she made note of what Valentino said was his specialty: aircraft construction engineering.

  When the dinner had started on dessert for some, though none for Jane as she'd eaten her fill and never stuffed herself, the conversation turned to what the crew planned to do next.

  Kate's gaze immediately turned to Jane.

  She looked around the table. There were ten pairs of eyes looking back at her.

  She looked around the room. It was filled and the hum of conversation had ramped up to noise.

  "Maybe nothing. Let's get back to the base and find someplace quiet and comfortable."

  Nicole suggested the lab. The chairs she'd ordered had turned out to be entirely too comfortable. They were still there but the room had been cleaned by a group of first years. Plus it had computers with CAD and other software in case they wanted to edge into serious.

  "But nothing too serious," said Jane. "I for one am done with work for a while. We are just going to shoot the breeze."

  "Aye, aye, Captain," said Ricky.

  Kate had ordered a Flyt van, anticipating a need for it as the dinner eased down. By the time the bill was paid it was waiting in the lot in front of the restaurant.

  In ten minutes they were back at the lab. Jane, ahead of everyone else with her lab key out, noticed that a great golden full moon was bright in the violent tinged twilight. It was just rising above the low hills beyond the lab.

  She stopped just an instant to appreciate the sight, then continued to open the double doors.

  The first years had done a good job. Everything was neat and clean, the chairs rented from the Academy Stores neatly lined against one wall. Jane pulled out one and sat in it, slouched, legs crossed in front of her. Her staff, knowing her habits, pulled out their own chairs and arranged them in an arc in front of her focused on her. The half dozen other cadets, without any discussion, filled in the arc to make a circle. Then they sat, three to one side of the circle, three others on the opposite side.

  Ricky said as he settled into his seat, "And so the Knights of the Round Table assemble for a quest."

  Jane surveyed her new crew, for this surely was what they were. By now she knew the symptoms of random people assembling themselves into an entirely voluntary group centered on her. She hoped she never misused her charisma, her power, her whatever.

  Robot roused long enough to comfort her in its assurance that it would never let her.

  "We've shown the way for aerial vehicles with telemag engines which skim the surface. The next task is to demonstrate higher altitude craft. This semester ends in the last week of May. The two weeks before that we'll need for finals and so on so we can graduate. So that puts our deadline the second Saturday in May when we show our result to the world the way we did today.

  "That gives us nine weeks to do this job."

  "Ten," someone said. "We can work Spring Break."

  "We will not. Finishing this semester, and for most of you the last year at the Academy, is going to be stressful enough. We will need that week to go home or to Timbuktoo or wherever and relax. If you're going to work on my team you will NOT take any work with you."

  Ricky said, "Ay, ay, Captain Slave Driver, Sir."
<
br />   There was laughter at this but Jane did not join in.

  "What we need to do here tonight is to look at the task, see what we can and want to contribute to it, and decide if we're going to stick with it.

  "Dim the room please, Kate."

  Her Exec wielded the remote she'd picked up from a work table and the overhead lights faded to half bright.

  "Vears on? Good."

  She pulled up the white paper supposedly written by her father and actually by her, mostly. Though he'd gone through it and adjusted the style to match his own. He'd also made several small corrections and two large ones.

  Then she clicked on one page. It had a title line of Multistage Jet Engine.

  "There are two subtasks we must tackle. One is to evaluate possible demonstrator air frames driven by our engine. We need an actual flyer to dramatically show that our engine works, not some static displays. In some ways this is the easier subtask of the two. Jet engines are a decades-mature tech and all sorts of airframes have been tried out. Not that this subtask will be easy.

  "The second is to explore all the ways telemag tech can be used to create a jet engine. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each. See what off-the-shelf tech we can use. Build what does not exist. Put it together.

  "Finally test it. Test it again. Test it again. The demonstrator must work and work well when we show it. We'll have a dress rehearsal to iron out the kinks in our presentation."

  Kate broke in. "We're already in fair shape on that. In a way today's presentation was a dress rehearsal too. We'll be able to reuse a lot of the prep for it."

  Jane nodded.

  "Let's look at the core design of all telemag jet engines."

  She highlighted a diagram in the white paper. It showed a household cooling fan. Curving arrows suggested air being pulled into the open cage which protected the bladed fan from contact with anything. Other arrows suggested air being pushed out of the cage in the direction the fan was facing.

  "A telemag jet is like this."

  The second diagram showed two fans seen from the side. The front of the fan on the left faced the back of fan on the right. The arrows showed air coming in to the left side fan, coming out of the right side fan.

  "Or like this."

  The third diagram showed a fat cylinder with a ring around its middle. The left end was labeled PULLER and had arrows coming into it. The right end was label PUSHER and had arrows coming out of it.

  "There are several ways to use the telemag effect to do this pull-push action. That is what the design team will need to do.

  "To get higher performance we need multi-stage engines. Like this one."

  She high-lighted a fourth diagram. It showed a longer cylinder, its side cut away to reveal circles packed like cookies in a tube of waxed paper.

  "In our first phase we need to evaluate as exhaustively as we can all the possible kinds of telemag jet engines. This is not just for our sake. Our end-of-project report will eventually be read by lots of people. This is for them as well as for our professional reputations.

  "Next phase is to work up some rough numbers on some of the more promising designs. Promising for our demonstrator, not promising for every design possible.

  "For example, what is the optimal spacing between stages? As the air moves faster through the engine we'll need to space each stage further apart.

  "Third phase is to narrow the number of designs to, say, three or four. Then do more accurate numbers. Narrow the candidates to two.

  "Final evaluation phase is to see what off-the-shelf and custom parts we'll need and pick the design we can produce quickest.

  "Then we go into the next phase. Get all the parts and put them together. Do some simple trials. Re-design. And do it over again.

  "OK, I'm beginning to get too detailed. This was an overview of what our task is in the high-flyer demonstrator. We'll get together midweek. Or maybe next weekend, and begin this project for real. Those of us who decide to stay in."

  She got up and everyone else did too. She mingled for a few minutes then excused herself to go to the restroom.

  Jane stayed in the bathroom long enough for the noise outside to tell her everyone was gone. Except, of course, her core crew.

  She opened the bathroom door. The lab was still half-lit but empty. The double doors were now open to the chill air.

  She knew what the situation was: her crew had taken chairs outside. Likely they were admiring the full moon. She picked up one of the chairs, now all neatly restacked against a wall, and joined them.

  She plunked her chair down amidst them and then herself in it. Stretched out her legs and crossed them. Sure enough, all chairs had been placed facing the moon.

  Ricky glanced at her and then back at the moon. He waved his beer bottle at it and said, "They had a historic day too, Boss. We heard earlier. The first four of the Lunar crew landed and moved into Luna City One."

  Jane would normally already know this. She'd long been following the progress of the underground village being built by robots controlled long-distance from Earth for the past few years. She had been too caught up in the demonstrator project for the past several weeks, however.

  "Everything went OK?"

  "Of course," said Nicole. "They way they've triple checked everything and then checked again it was nigh onto inevitable."

  "Nigh onto," said Kate. "The Universe is always ready with ways to fuck us up."

  Jane slid her vear viewplate down and selected the Luna Public Channel. It was a 24-hour automatic relay of visuals from several Lunar cameras. A 5x8 array of small previews of the camera contents let her select one preview, one which by tiny motions inside it showed that some action was taking place in its view.

  That view expanded to fill most of the faceplate of her vear. It was like a window into an avenue of a distant city, which was the reality. The city was underground on the Moon. Years in the making by remotely controlled robots, in the last year air had been added from rocks containing small amounts of oxygen and nitrogen captured in various chemical compounds. Then water had been added, also from Lunar rocks.

  Though most of the water was in the city's plumbing, some of the water was pooled in small ponds and streams. That moistened the air and also lessened the sterile look of the city's avenues.

  The city did have life though not visible through most of the vid cams placed about the city. It was aquatic life in water-filled aquariums. Once the aquariums were thriving the crew of four had followed with several small trees and bushes imported at great expense from Earth. Tonight (today in the Lunar city) that crew was re-planting them in beds created by robots.

  She watched the gardeners in their green and gold overalls toiling away, doing manually what remotely controlled robots could have done. However, it took a second and a half for the view from the Moon to come to Earth and the same for commands to get back to the Moon: a three-second reflex arc. In those seconds a lot could happen which needed correcting. Remotely controlled robots were very clumsy when it came to fast-happening events on the Moon or ones which required delicate manipulation.

  Jane watched for a few minutes, chatting idly with her friends. Then she got up and went to her barracks and bed.

  <>

  Sunday newzines had no mentions of the Academy's telemag tech demonstrator. Then the stories picked up, such as the Los Angeles Times local-interest "Pasadena Daughter Does her Professor Father Proud." The Colorado Springs division of the Denver Post focused on the fact that the Air Force Academy had scored a coup by fielding a tech demonstrator of a theory from California's prestigious CalTech.

  The Boulder DailyCamera had a video gotten from the Academy's PR group supplemented by vids and stills copied from the personal blogs of cadets. Lots of the shots were of Klaus in the golf cart floating serenely above grass and gravel lots. "Virtual Anti-Gravity!" was the DailyCamera's headline, and similar ones from other visually focused newszines.

  Britain's Daily Mail had photos which focus
ed on Kate and Nicole (but not, Jane noted with amusement, she herself). They had worn the unsexy Academy uniforms and modest makeup but the shots were selected which best highlighted the charms of the two. From long exposure Jane had forgotten that the two women were beautiful.

  As the week progressed Jane, busy with her usual schedule, nevertheless spent a few minutes each day on stories about the tech demonstrator. Her SuperSmart had a news filter which pulled out stories from the daily ocean of new information on the web which might interest her, and there were a lot. Toward the end of the week she could only spend the seconds it took to read the headlines.

  One caught her attention: the somewhat overheated "CalTech Prof in Furious Battle Over Controversial Theory." She sent a link to her dad with the note "What the H?" He answered back "Oh, if it was only a tenth that exciting. Love you Mom sends hugs me too."

  <>

  Jane arrived early at the Lab Saturday morning only to find Ricky there before her. He had used the high-end color printer in the lab to print blown-up pictures of Kate and Nicole from the newszines reporting on the demonstrator.

  One of the photos showed Kate bending to give a canned drink to someone sitting in the lab that afternoon. Her bottom was prominent in that picture.

  The headline read, "She Stoops to Conquer."

  Jane plopped down in a chair beside him near a lab table. She, like he, had a PortaMeal from a street vendor a couple of blocks from her barracks.

  "She's going to stoop to bounce a crowbar over your skull."

  "Aw, no, women secretly love it when you praise their beauty."

  Nicole said as she came in the lab from the hallway, "Says the great expert on women. Morning, luv," she added to Jane.

  Kate and Klaus were not far behind. Kate only glanced at her picture and raised an eyebrow.

  They all settled to eat their various breakfasts, chatting idly about the events of the week.

  When the meal was done Jane was still sipping from a last cup of coffee well-sugared and -creamed. Kate opened a discussion of publicity.

  "Amidst all the crap we got some thoughtful stories about the potential for telemag propulsion, mostly from defense and aerospace journals. A fair number suggested floaters be used as a first stages for launching other vehicles. That speaks to your interest in astronautics, Jane. You just might be taking off for orbit with a floater as your first stage."